Ember today announced continued global
expansion with the opening of new international facilities and the
signing of new international customers and distributors. The company
also announced some major milestone achievements for the first half of
2005 to further strengthen Ember’s position in the ZigBee wireless
networking market. ZigBee is an embedded wireless network standard
that solves the unique needs of remote monitoring and control, and
sensor network applications.
Ember opened a new research and business facility in Cambridge,
England, to accommodate expansion of the company’s radio IC
development team, as well as a business development team serving
Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA).
On the new customer front, Ember has announced new business with a
U.S. government defense agency, valued at more than $1 million.
Details of the defense application will be announced in a subsequent
news release. In addition, Raymarine, the U.K.-based developer of
marine electronics, is now shipping its Ember-enabled wireless
autopilot system unveiled in February.
Ember also announced that two major Asian distributors – Memec
(Asia-Pacific) Ltd. in China and MJL Technologies Ltd. in South Korea
– will distribute and market Ember’s ZigBee wireless semiconductor
systems to OEM customers in that region.
“One measure of an industry standard’s market success is its
adoption across all regions of the world. Ember’s growing base of
international customers, partners and offices demonstrates that ZigBee
is achieving that goal,” said Bob Heile, chairman of the ZigBee
Alliance.
Ember’s international expansion caps a significant growth spurt in
2005 during which the company achieved a string of market-making
milestones. These achievements include:
Next-generation products:
– Ember EM250, the industry’s first ZigBee-on-a-chip solution;
– Ember EM260, a new low-power ZigBee network co-processor.
New customers:
– 50 new design wins were added in the first half of 2005.
New partners:
– Micrcontroller partners – Texas Instruments and Atmel;
– Development tool partner – Tendril Networks.
New software:
– EmberZNet 2.0, Ember’s next-generation ZigBee-compliant
networking stack.
New tools:
– Ember WorkBench 1.0, a development tool suite for embedded
ZigBee applications;
– Jumpstart Development Kit, an entry-level development kit.
More ZigBee developers:
– More than 175 certified developers have attended Ember
University;
– Ember’s platform (including chips, software and tools) will be
used for hands on training in Las Vegas, October 3-5 at the
ZigBee Developers’ Conference in conjunction with CABA’s
Connected@Home2005.
“With major customers like Philips Lighting, Eaton, Control4,
Raymarine, NURI, rolling out Ember-enabled ZigBee products, the market
is set accelerate rapidly over the next several years. We are also
getting ready to announce more major customers in the coming weeks,”
said Venkat Bahl, Ember’s vice president of marketing.
About ZigBee: Wireless Control That Simply Works
The ZigBee Alliance is an association of companies working
together to enable reliable, cost-effective, low-power, wirelessly
networked, monitoring and control products based on an open global
standard. The ZigBee Alliance is a rapidly growing, non-profit
industry consortium of leading semiconductor manufacturers, technology
providers, OEMs, and end-users worldwide. Membership is open to all.
Additional information can be found at www.zigbee.org.
About Ember Corporation
Ember Corporation develops ZigBee-compliant wireless semiconductor
solutions that help automate homes, make buildings consume less
energy, enable manufacturing plants to run with fewer breakdowns, and
keep the country’s borders and infrastructure safe and secure. With
more than 120 customers, Ember’s vision is to help create an “Internet
of things” by enabling the eight billion microcontrollers built into
products each year to support low-cost, low-power networking
applications in any industry. Headquartered in Boston with offices and
distributors worldwide, the company is a lead promoter of the ZigBee
Alliance and its platform is the National Technical Systems’ (NTS)
“Golden Suite” for 802.15.4/ZigBee interoperability testing. For more
information, please visit www.ember.com.
